The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife

Chapter 6

The door of Scott Shelby’s office was locked. Mason knocked. Almost immediately they could hear the sound of steps. A chunky man with pale complexion, slightly stooped shoulders and a high forehead opened the door and regarded his visitors with dark, restless eyes. Those eyes seemed hot with emotion. The face itself was that of a man who is cool, collected and thoroughly master of himself. Only his eyes belied the placid features.

“Mr. Mason?”

Mason nodded, said, “Shelby, I presume?”

The two men shook hands.

“Miss Street, my secretary.”

“Come in,” Shelby invited.

Shelby escorted them through an outer office into his private office, said “I want you folks to meet Miss Ellen Cushing. She has a real estate agency in the building and I knew she’d be working late. I asked her to come in.” He laughed apologetically and then added, “Frankly, I wanted a witness and I see that Mr. Mason had the same idea. I had intended to try and palm Miss Cushing off as my secretary and then thought I couldn’t get away with it so I decided to be frank. She’s a witness.”

“All right,” Mason said, “Miss Street is a witness, too. We’re two against two. I guess however, we don’t need to bother about that angle of it.”

“No, I guess not,” Shelby admitted.

Mason said, “All right. What’s your proposition?”

“Well, of course, Mr. Mason, I don’t want to stand in the way and...”

“Never mind the preliminaries,” Mason said. “They don’t mean anything to either of us. We’re businessmen. Why not get down to brass tacks?”

“How high will your client go?” Shelby asked.

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“She’d be guided by your recommendations?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how high would you go?”

“Not very high,” Mason said, sitting down and crossing his legs. “Anyone want a cigarette?”

Shelby said, “I smoke cigars myself.”

Della Street and Ellen Cushing took cigarettes. While he was holding a match to Ellen Cushing’s cigarette, Mason sized her up.

She was a woman who might have been either in the late twenties or the early thirties, a blonde with impudent grayish-green eyes, a supple, well curved figure, although her waist was slender and her stomach was flat. She sat very erect in her chair, her knees crossed, the toe of her well shod foot carefully pointed downward.

She was conscious of Mason’s appraisal and her eyes raised from the flame of the match to regard the lawyer with quiet humor. It was as though she had said in words, “I knew I’d catch you doing that.”

Mason grinned, turned his attention back to Shelby, said, “If you thought this was going to be easy, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“I knew that as soon as you phoned.”

“Just so we understand each other,” Mason said.

“However,” Shelby said, “I don’t want you to think this is a shakedown. I really had no idea a sale was being made until Mrs. Keller told my agent at the bank.”

Mason’s silence could have shown either that he felt that point was now unimportant or that he thought the man was a liar.

Shelby watched him in thoughtful brooding silence.

“It’s your move,” Mason said.

“I intend to give written notice to the title company and serve a copy on Parker Benton that I have a lease on the property. In fact, I have already prepared such notice and will attach to it a copy of the lease. I don’t like to do it because the escrow is, I understand, about ready to be closed. Benton won’t want oil wells on his island. He is, of course, acting on the assumption he’s getting a clear title. They must have told him the place was free of clouds. My notice will make him take it subject to whatever rights I have.”

“You haven’t any.”

“The lease says I have.”

“A joker.”

“I don’t so regard it. After all, it doesn’t make any difference. Parker Benton isn’t going to pay thirty thousand for a lawsuit.”

“And you aren’t going to sue,” Mason said.

“I intend to, if I have to do it — to protect my rights. I hope I don’t have to.”

“It’ll cost you ten thousand dollars to find out if you have any rights,” Mason said.

“And take five years,” Shelby observed.

“At a hundred a month.”

“It’ll cost your client something, too.”

“Naturally,” Mason admitted.

“And the sale will be off the minute I serve this notice.”

“That won’t help you any.”

“It will hurt your client.”

“We might bond against your claim.”

“Benton wouldn’t stand for it. But let’s be reasonable, Mr. Mason. I don’t want to block that sale. I only wanted to keep the lease alive. I didn’t even know there was a sale pending until...”

“Yes, go on.”

“Until Mrs. Keller told my agent when he tendered her the five hundred dollars at the bank.”

“How did you know who was buying the property?”

“She told my agent.”

“Told him Parker Benton was buying it?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know that the escrow was just about ready to be closed and the deal concluded?”

Shelby’s eyes suddenly shifted. “I... I think she told him.”

“And I note that you know the amount of the purchase price. How did you get that?”

Shelby said abruptly, “I don’t think you’re doing yourself or your client any good by cross-examining me this way, Mr. Mason.”

“How much?” Mason asked.

Shelby looked him in the eye. “All right. Since you want the figure, it’s ten thousand dollars.”

Mason got to his feet, nodded to Della Street, said, “I guess that’s all.”

“You’d better think it over,” Shelby warned. “Benton is paying a great deal more for that island than it’s worth, a lot more than any other person would pay. It’s a most advantageous deal.”

Mason started for the door, turned, said, “I guess it’s only fair to tell you that when I start fighting I fight rather rough.”

“Go ahead,” Shelby said. “When you come right down to it, I am no gilded lily myself.”

“That makes it perfectly fine,” Mason said. “Just so we don’t misunderstand each other.”

“We don’t. Only get this straight, Mr. Mason. The minute you leave this office, I’m going to mail a notice to the escrow company.”

“All right,” Mason said. “And the minute you do that, I’m going to sue to set aside the lease on the ground of fraud. I’m going to sue you for slander of title. I’m going to look into the question of whether the lease was signed on the strength of false representations.”

“You go right ahead,” Shelby said. “And by the time you get done with all that stuff, Benton will have bought and sold half a dozen other country homes. Your client will be left with an island on her hands, and the island will be subject to my oil lease.”

Mason hesitated. “You think this offer of Benton’s is more than she’d get from anyone else?”

“Considerably more.”

“How much more?”

Shelby said, “The deal is for thirty thousand dollars. I consider that fifteen thousand dollars is a big price for the island. However, I’m willing to sell my interest in it for the ten thousand and that will still leave your client five thousand more than she could get from anyone else.”

“In other words, you think the island is worth only about fifteen thousand dollars?”

“That’s right.”

“And you want ten thousand dollars in order to step back and let this sale go through?”

“Put it that way if you want to.”

“But the figure is right? The amount is ten thousand?”

“Yes.”

“That’s bedrock?”

“Yes.”

Mason said, “All right. Remember that you yourself have adopted the position that the deal with Benton is a good many thousand dollars more than the island is really worth.”

“What’s the object in remembering that?”

Mason grinned. “It affects the measure of damages in case I go after you for slander of title. You interfere with this sale and I’ll stick you for damages.”

“You couldn’t get ’em if you did.”

“I’ll remember that, too.”

Shelby said, “I was hoping we could have settled this thing amicably, Mr. Mason.”

“Naturally, at that price.”

“I might come down a little.”

“How much?”

“Not over one thousand — or two thousand at the most.”

“That’s your final figure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good night,” Mason said, and held the door open for Della Street.

Shelby hurriedly got up, walked around his desk. “After all, Mr. Mason, there’s a great deal of money involved and...”

Mason stepped out into the corridor, pulled the door shut behind him, cutting off Shelby in midsentence.

They marched across to the elevators and pushed the button marked DOWN.

“Don’t you think he’d have made more concessions?” Della Street asked curiously in a low voice.

“Sure.”

“Then why not wait?”

“Because he’d have only come down to five thousand. The way things are now, he’ll get in a panic and start letting his hair down. There’s lots of time. Let him feel we’re tough and not too eager and he’ll get down to brass tacks.”

“You were pretty rough with him.”

“Uh huh.”

“Because you think he’s a chiseler?”

“Right.”

“And that witness?”

Mason laughed, “Quote witness unquote. She’s got her finger in the middle of the pie.”

“You think she... Yes, I guess so. She did seem pretty — possessive, just her manner.”

Mason said, “Remember, she’s in the real estate business. Remember that Shelby has found out all about this deal, all about the escrow, all about the fact that the escrow is about ready to be closed, and knows the amount of the purchase price. Put one two together with the other two and tell me what the total is.”

Della Street smiled at him. “Four.”

“Four,” Mason said, “is right.”

The elevator came gliding up the shaft, stopped at the floor, the door slid back. A man got out, started across toward the door of Shelby’s office, then abruptly whirled to regard Mason with surprise.

“Well, well,” Mason said. “Sergeant Dorset of Homicide. What brings you here, Sergeant? Looking for a body?”

Dorset abruptly wheeled, walked back to the elevators, said to the operator, “Go on down. You can pick him up in a minute or two. Mason, I want to talk with you.”

Mason smiled affably. “Go right ahead. I just had a very interesting visit with the district attorney this afternoon. Anything you can add will be in the nature of an anticlimax.”

Dorset paid no attention to Mason’s statement. “Who’re you calling on up here?” he asked.

Mason smiled, and said nothing.

“All right, all right,” Dorset said. “Go ahead. Be smart if you want to, but I was just wondering.”

“I gathered you were.”

Dorset jerked his thumb toward Shelby’s office. “Know anything about that poison angle?”

Mason’s foot pressed against Della’s shoe. He said, “What do you suppose I’m up here for?”

“That’s what bothers me,” Dorset said. “I’ll tell you one thing, Mason. If you’re representing the person that poisoned him and are trying to get the thing all hushed up, you’re out on a limb, because the doctor saved the stomach contents and had them analyzed. There was enough arsenic to have killed a horse. That’s why I’m here. Now why are you here?”

Mason said, “Let’s say that any resemblance between the reason I’m here and the reason you’re here is purely coincidental.”

Dorset frowned. “All right. Be smart. Remember, I’ve warned you. Good evening.”

“Good-by,” Mason said, and jabbed the elevator button once more as Sergeant Dorset pounded his aggressive way toward Scott Shelby’s office.

“Do you gather that Mr. Scott Shelby has been on the receiving end of an attempted murder?” Della asked.

Mason was frowning as the red elevator light came on. “I’m darned if I know,” he said, and then as he entered the elevator muttered almost musingly to himself, “Poison, huh? Now isn’t that something?”